Inheritance Tax Manual

Reduced account: purpose

If part of an estate is exempt from inheritance tax, there is no operational reason why we need precise values for all items that pass to an exempt beneficiary. The reduced account in intended to reduce the burden on personal representatives (IHTM05012) where because of exemptions part or all of an estate is free from tax.

What this means in practice is that provided certain conditions (IHTM10472) are met the personal representatives only have to complete some of the supplementary pages (IHTM10473). And in many cases they will only need to supply estimated values (IHTM10474) of property passing to a surviving spouse or civil partner (IHTM11032), a qualifying charity or other exempt body.